Watching the BBC iPlayer outside of the UK, safely and reliably

July 24, 2009 by Dave Clements | 31 Comments

The BBC iPlayer has been around for a few years now and is an excellent service for catching up with British shows online. Its recent (May 2010) design changes are a welcome change as well. This tutorial shows you how to watch the iPlayer using Firefox.

Step 1

Download and install the latest stable release of Tor using the default options. Tor is a project that allows you to route your internet traffic through various servers around the world, either for anonymity, or for overcoming geo-restrictions.

Step 2

We now need to gather a list of servers with “exit nodes” in the UK, meaning that internet traffic routed through these servers appears to come from the UK. Go to http://torstatus.cyberphunk.org/. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the screen and select “Select Custom / Advanced Query Options”. From there, select yes for Exit and under Advanced Search, select Country Code Equals GB. Take note of the list of servers (router names) that are shown on the next page, ignoring the Unnamed or Unknown ones. If that website is not working, use any of the following mirrors:

Step 3

Go to Start Menu and open All Programs -> Vidalia Bundle -> Tor -> torcc (Mac users need to go to Library > Vidalia > torrc). This will open the Tor config file. Scroll all the way (it may be blank) to the bottom and enter the following lines, replacing [servers] with the list of servers you obtained in step 2. The server names need to be comma separated (i.e. server1,server2,server3)

StrictExitNodes 1
ExitNodes [servers]

Save the file and exit your text editor.

Step 4

Install the Foxy Proxy addon for Firefox. Once you have restarted FireFox, left-click on the FoxyProxy icon the status bar at the bottom right of the window. Select Add New Proxy and go to the General tab. Give it a name like Tor. Under the Proxy Details tab, enter 127.0.0.1 for the host or IP address and port 9050. Check the SOCKS proxy checkbox and make sure that you select SOCKS v5. Now move over to the URL Patterns tab and add a new pattern. Give it a name like BBC and enter *.bbc.co.uk* in the URL pattern. Click OK and exit out of all the option screens.

Step 5

Launch Vidalia. After a few seconds, it should say “Connected to the Tor Network” and the onion should turn green.

Step 6

Now go to the iPlayer and check to see whether it works. You may occasionally have to revise your server list as servers come and go.

Author: Dave Clements

Dave Clements has been building websites for close to a decade and in 2010, he formalised that by starting his own company, The UK Edge. He now works on a variety of web projects, from simple tasks like installing a new WordPress site, to consulting on problems, or redesigning his clients' sites. He also runs Do It With WordPress, a site dedicated to providing free tutorials on WordPress. When he's not building your new website, you can find Dave eating Wheat Thins, spending time with friends and family, watching Indie films, fostering kittens from the local Humane Society, listening to some dubstep, dance and electronic rock, and exploring the world.